Christmas Without Power

For many families who lost power, they also lost heat. As you could imagine, that's just aweful timing when you're dealing with the holidays.

Outtages dot the stateline, but they are slowly being repaired. Take Sunrise Lane for instance. This morning, one side of the street had the glow of lights, while families on the other side were struggling to stay warm.

Jim Binning lives in the neighborhood and was also powerless. "Since the power went out it's been cold. We have a little kerosene heater which has been keeping us warm."

One family prepared a Christmas breakfast over a charcoal grill set up in their garage and another packed their car and headed off to a relative's.

"We were supposed to have my parents and my in-laws and my sister-in-law over at our house for Christmas morning, and we are packing up and going to my sister-in-laws at the last minute," said Sunrise Lane resident Lora McClelland.

The worst part of the morning may have been when electricity was restored. It was a tease, and only lasted 45 minutes.

"I thought it was going to be a good Christmas, and it was on long enough, we had the tree, opened presents, then it went out again," said Karl Hesler.

"We called everybody and said 'we're on, our oven's working, we can have everything here' but then we had to call everybody back and say 'we're back to sarah's house again,'" Lora told us.

Jim said, "we were jumping around 'yay, it's warm' the furnace came on, and we just got comfortable and it went off again." Karl's dad Joseph Helser said, "They keep telling us that soon it will be back on, it just, sometimes it seems like they're teasing, but we know they're trying to do the best they can."

Just 20 minutes after we spoke with Joseph, Com-Ed workers finished their work, fixed some connections, and power was restored, lighting up Christmas for the neighborhood.

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